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Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) are a broad challenge for decision-makers. NCDs account for seven out of every 10 deaths globally, with 42 percent occurring prematurely in individuals under age 70. Despite their heavy toll, NCDs are underfunded, with only around two percent of global funding dedicated to the disease set. Country governments are responsible for funding targeted actions to reduce the NCD burden, but among other priorities, many have yet to invest in the health-system interventions and policy measures that can reduce the burden. This article examines “investment cases” as a potential mechanism for catalyzing attention to—and funding for—NCDs. In Jamaica, using the UN inter-agency OneHealth Tool, we conducted an economic analysis to estimate the return-on-investment from scaling up strategic clinical interventions, and from implementing or intensifying policy measures that target NCD risk factors. In addition, we conducted an institutional and context (ICA) analysis, interviewing stakeholders across sectors to take stock of promising policy pathways (e.g., areas of general consensus, political appetite and opportunity) as well as challenges to implementation. The economic analysis found that scaling up clinical interventions that target CVD, diabetes, and mental health disorders, and policy measures that target tobacco and alcohol use, would save over 6,600 lives between 2017–2032, and avert JMD 81.3 billion (USD 640 million) in direct and indirect economic costs that result from mortality and morbidity linked to NCDs. The ICA uncovered government economic growth targets and social priorities that would be aided by increased attention to NCDs, and it linked these targets and priorities to the economic analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I aim to explore the effect of good governance on equity returns, and empirically investigate if governance at the country level has asset pricing implications and contributes to the idiosyncrasy of price jumps. Jumps are found to be far less systematic than the smooth (non-jump) component of country price indexes. Hence, if jumps are more idiosyncratic, governance should primarily affect the jump risk component. This is good news for international investors, because diversification provides insurance against jumps. Relying on an equilibrium asset-pricing model in an economy under jump diffusion, I decompose the moments of the returns of international stock markets into a diffusive (systematic) risk and a (idiosyncratic) jump risk part. For a balanced panel of 52 countries, my results suggest that governance is an important determinant of (idiosyncratic) jump risk. Stock markets in poorly governed countries are characterized by higher volatility and more negative return asymmetry, primarily driven by the higher jump risk. Regulatory quality, the government effectiveness and the control of corruption appear to be most important. Results are robust to the inclusion of various controls for other country- or market-specific characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using 5-minute high frequency data from the Chinese stock market, we employ a non-parametric method to estimate Fama-French portfolio realized jumps and investigate whether the estimated positive, negative and sign realized jumps could forecast or explain the cross-sectional stock returns. The Fama-MacBeth regression results show that not only have the realized jump components and the continuous volatility been compensated with risk premium, but also that the negative jump risk, the positive jump risk and the sign jump risk, to some extent, could explain the return of the stock portfolios. Therefore, we should pay high attention to the downside tail risk and the upside tail risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the stylized facts, correlation and interaction between volatility and returns at the 5-minute frequency for gold, silver, platinum and palladium from May 2000 to April 2015. We study the full sample period, as well as three subsamples to determine how high-frequency data of precious metals have developed over time. We find that over the full sample, the number of trades has increased substantially over time for each precious metal, while the bid-ask spread has narrowed over time, indicating an increase in liquidity and price efficiency. We also find strong evidence of periodicity in returns, volatility, volume and bid-ask spread. Returns and volume both experience strong intraday periodicity linked to the opening and closing of major markets around the world while the bid-ask spread is at its lowest when European markets are open. We also show a bilateral Granger causality between returns and volatility of each precious metal, which holds for the vast majority subsamples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an agent-based model we examine the dynamics of stock price fluctuations and their rates of return in an artificial financial market composed of fundamentalist and chartist agents with and without confidence. We find that chartist agents who are confident generate higher price and rate of return volatilities than those who are not. We also find that kurtosis and skewness are lower in our simulation study of agents who are not confident. We show that the stock price and confidence index—both generated by our model—are cointegrated and that stock price affects confidence index but confidence index does not affect stock price. We next compare the results of our model with the S&P 500 index and its respective stock market confidence index using cointegration and Granger tests. As in our model, we find that stock prices drive their respective confidence indices, but that the opposite relationship, i.e., the assumption that confidence indices drive stock prices, is not significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author critiques an article by Damian Kulash on the economic importance of investments for the transportation sector published in the Summer 1997 issue of the periodical "Transportation Quarterly." The work relies heavily on the work of economists in claiming that certain transportation investments outperform private investments by a large margin in the 1950s and the 1960s. There is a strong inference in Kulash's article that major public investment in the transportation systems will produce substantial returns in the future only if the investment is focused. To conclude, the work contends that investment in a transportation network rather than isolated projects will contribute to growing economy is sound.

Public investments in transportation have always been seen as a spur to growth in the immediate localities where the new transportation facilities are located. What has not always been recognized is that these investments, taken as a whole produce a network that benefits all other parts of the system, including economic activities far removed from the location of the investment. Analysis of the past patterns can help target future transportation investments to achieve the greatest economic impact. Future investments can produce the greatest economic return if they are targeted to programs that will preserve or expand network capacity.

The author evaluates the points made in the article by Damian Kulash on the economic importance of investments for the transportation sector published in the Summer 1997 issue of the periodical "Transportation Quarterly,". There are indications that Kulash is spinning an ex post story to rationalize the numbers that related economic studies on the topic are producing. In spite of the plausibility of the story that Kulash tells, there are many plausible stories to explain a single set of numbers, many of which are contradictory. In the end, policy decisions can only be enriched with a more multidimensional, inter-disciplinary and contextual approaches.

The author gave commendation to the points raised in the article by Damian Kulash on the economic importance of investments for the transportation sector published in the Summer 1997 issue of the periodical "Transportation Quarterly,". The study accurately pointed out the network effects of investments in the American highway system in the 1950s and 1960s which produced returns several times greater than other public and private investments by providing access to new markets and paving the way for enormous productivity gains. However, questions are raised about the availability of such returns in the 1990s. Consequently, the truths about the information-based and global nature of the national economy in the 21st century will significantly affect the direction of transportation investments.

This column discusses the irony of government funding of science--that is, that governments tend to fund scientific research in areas where returns are believed to be high, but where there's little data to confirm or refute this belief. The author illustrates these concepts using the example of the server software Apache. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]